Category Archives: IT

January 15, 2014 · 02:44

My £13,000,000 invoice!

I got a ‘nice’ wakeup call just now, as I was reading an article in the guardian. It is at www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/14/ministry-of-defence-failed-computer-system. The title “Ministry of Defence ‘wasted millions on failed computer system’” got my attention. The UK is riddled with IT people trying to get a decent job. This article implied with quotes like “The recruitment partnering project, a £1.3bn scheme intended to enable the army to recruit online, is almost two years behind schedule and will not be fully operational until April 2015 at the earliest, the Times said.”

Now, I understand that the MoD does things a little different and that this online approach takes a little time and money, but the fact that the cost of this system is more than the personnel costs of an entire regiment for 50 years (take into account that most IT solutions are usually set for a lifetime span of no more than 10 years) gives weight to the issue that it is time to go public. The additional quote “the problems are so serious that defence secretary Philip Hammond is considering spending nearly £50m on a new solution.” gives weight to my response “You pay me 10% of that and I will assist in getting the issue sorted”

You see, any IT project is basically simple.

  1. What must be done and by what date?
  2. What must it cover?
  3. What are you willing to spend?
  4. Document the agreement and sign it by all parties!

The rest is usually political manoeuvring. (I apologise for oversimplifying the problem)

The fact that the article implied that the costs were a billion plus, gives the impression that the entire military network system got overhauled. This leaves us with the thought that there is a decent chance that Sir Iain Lobban of GCHQ is laughing himself to death reading about these events, so perhaps the loud honing laughter will move Defence to take a harsh look at themselves in the cold light of these events.

Do not get me wrong. I know that IT solutions tend to cost, and things get delayed, but this is about recruiting people, the price is implied to be set at thirteen hundred million pounds and it is already 2 years late. So, why was any amount paid in regards to a failed system? It is of course likely that those who delivered had a quality ironclad contract in place, yet the mentioned amount is extremely out of proportion compared to the non-working delivery.

The next quote is also one that opens debate “If the ICT hosting solution is not put in place then the MoD risks not gaining the appropriate number of recruits needed. Given recent criticism of army recruitment … and the use of reserves, this would lead to further negative media reporting and reputational damage for MoD.” So, the 2 year delay was not a clear indication of issues? I reckon that the spending of well over a billion on a non-working system is more than enough for laughter, ridicule and reputation damage for the MoD for a long time to come.

To put this all in perspective take a look at this quote from the Guardian made in August 2013 (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/01/gchq-spy-agency-nsa-edward-snowden). The quote is “GCHQ now has liaison officers working inside MI5, MI6 and the Soca, the serious and organised crime agency. It takes the lion’s share of the £1.9bn budget for Britain’s intelligence services” so basically, the MoD blew on a non-working recruitment option, the amount that GCHQ needs to keep it completely operational (for a year).

Seems a little out of whack, does it not?

Now for some other fun facts! Recruitment is all about creating interest. Now consider that the cost to make a multiplatform next-gen video game is £15-£25 million pound. So, the youthful player could get introduced to all kinds of positions, challenges, military functions and so on. The development is when compared to what is wasted less than 2% of those costs. More interesting, it could be sold at the newsagent for £5. The MoD could break even, or even make some money too (which would definitely be a nice change). It is a game and it might not have all of the information, but together with an information website loaded with PDF’s, application information and a registration bank should never have exceeded £80 million, from what I envision at present (including the game development). Why was this solution not hosted via GCHQ? The people at the MoD might know of the place, it is in Cheltenham and it looks like a massive donut (Yummy!). It has better security and more options for facilitation than most secure banks can dream of (GCHQ is not to be confused with the NSA, where you can copy all data to a USB stick at your own convenience).

So, do I have a case here? Actually, it was not me, but The Times, who started it, and the Guardian for giving it the visibility that goes far beyond the UK borders.

I must try to be neutral in these matters and very likely the article is missing key elements considering the amount involved, but seeing how 1 in 7 in the UK lives below poverty on one side, whilst on the other side a billion plus is wasted to this degree is extremely upsetting. I have proudly worked in IT since 1981 and seeing events like these, just do not cut it with me and it should not cut it with you, the reader either.

There is however a little more. “This leaked report points to the latest series of catastrophic failures at the Ministry of Defence on David Cameron’s watch.” is a quote I have an issue with. The fact that it is 2 years late means that this was supposed to be finished late 2011. When was the project started? Who were the people starting this, who was involved? It is of course possible that this was all on the conservative watch, yet, that must still be verified. The mention in the article of “after failing in 2011 to challenge a MoD policy” on the article gives rise to the thought that this has for a large part been an internal MoD failing. In addition “The project management team was inexperienced and under-resourced and the army failed to take charge when delays started and put in a suitable contingency plan.” gives way to my four step issue. The first two steps, as I mentioned it, also cover resources, the fact that this was not met means that the failing was on more than one level. Who at the MoD was involved? Was this person aware of the required skillset?

All questions that should have risen with any senior decision maker before the project was accepted and the checklists should have tripped several ‘alarms’ as the project was going forward. The fact that the large amount had been ‘lost’ indicates that none of these issues were factually dealt with.

The article raises a few more questions, but the horror should be clear. It will keep on costing more for now and before Labour starts ‘calling’ for botched jobs, they should take a look at the issues we saw in 2010 (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html). From that part we get the clear idea that infrastructure and policies alone are not getting IT choices done. Knowledge is likely to fix that; you just need to make sure the right person is on the job.

With the amount that has been spent, I feel comfortable sending them with my 13 million pound invoice.
(Payment within 30 days for this consult would be appreciated, as I have to pay my bar bill).

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January 13, 2014 · 12:10

What is sent to the US?

What many feared, some justly, some weirdly out of sorts is now happening. Let us be fair, whatever is in the yellow pages, many will know and have and as such there is no ‘US monitoring’ going on. So what is going on? The fact that the story as leaked went from a possible sale of 3 billion, to slightly less and to now 450 million is quite a leap (at http://www.smh.com.au/business/telstra-faces-scrutiny-over-sale-of-sensis-20140112-30ooj.html ). The latest message in the Sydney Morning Herald shows an interesting graph. Even though incomplete (as in costs that are connected), the fact that that something is now getting sold at roughly 30% of the annual earnings is also unsettling. In my personal view, someone is getting pretty rich on this deal!

So, is this about the US? No, good business is good business. If they find the sucker punch solution where they buy something at 30% of revenue and they can hold onto it for 18 months, then the investor would have made a killing. It would be very good business. The question becomes whether we should question the sanity of Telstra. That question remains a question as the costs for Sensis remains unknown, but the fact that someone in the US is willing to dash out half a billion means that the numbers were done and to some it all adds up.

When we see the quote “David Thodey, has shown he wants to offload legacy businesses that face further declines in revenue, and reposition the Telco for the digital world.” we need to wonder what possesses a CEO to ‘reposition‘ the company at minus 1.35 billion dollars revenue a year. Yes, there might be issues at what the value of Sensis is worth in 2 years and that would be a valid question. The issue is that offloading business solutions that have proven themselves for a long time (the Yellow pages) means that the business atmosphere is changing.

So, do we see this as a Telstra stupidity? Not sure, it could be visionary, yet that is only known when the path comes to fruition. The issue that business spectator mentioned that Sensis could be sold for 3 billion before the weekend (at http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2014/1/11/telecommunications/telstra-may-sell-sensis-3bn) and one day later it goes for slightly less according to Reuters. The fact that the weekend diminished the sales price by well over 80% gives thought that someone’s breads is getting buttered (a lot). The last part give thought when we see the Reuters article quote “Goldman Sachs is advising Telstra and Gresham is advising the U.S. firm, the newspaper said.”

The fact that some of the Gresham people were formerly big wigs at Goldman Sachs makes me wonder even further. Is this just a business venture or is this the start of a few solid golden handshakes (and I mean solid 24K golden handshakes).

The last part of info worries me and I know that I have no right to be worried. It is also true that Goldman Sachs is not into the act of breaking the law (perhaps bending it to the legal maximum yes, which is not a crime).

If this is a valid business deal, then I have no right to be worried (it is not like I work there). The evidence is however a worrying one. Why cut a 1.4 billion revenue business in these harsh economic times? David Thodey might be the visionary Telstra needed or he might not, time will tell!

 

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December 27, 2013 · 20:53

Internet Privacy?

There was an interesting article in the Guardian yesterday that caught my attention today. It is an article by Haroon Siddique. It deals with the view voiced by High Court Judge Navi Pillay (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/un-navi-pillay-internet-privacy).

I am not opposing her view, yet there are a few sides that the article was not touching on. The first quote is “Pillay has been asked by the UN to prepare a report on protection of the right to privacy” Now, I am not opposing privacy, yet it must be clear that there must be a clear separation between privacy and anonymity.

The enormous growth in trolling, online bullying and identity theft also come with a new set of responsibilities. Even though privacy might be a valid side, the anonymity that people abuse (many millions on a daily basis) must also be dealt with. In addition, there are still issues with the ‘issues’ that had been claimed by Snowden. I see the press advocating his ‘truths’ on several fields, yet the actual evidence is not shown. Let me be clear, there is no issue with the claim of mass surveillance, which has been established via several sources. The issue is that a percentage of his claims do not seem to have been scrutinized to the extent that it should have been. It is my personal view that the Guardian (and others) have been placed several articles, yet beyond “according to the documents leaked by Snowden” there has been no concrete and visible validation of the shown facts.

The next part is the quote “to protest against the routine interception of data by governments around the world” the fact that Facebook and Co are routinely doing the same to sell it on to marketeers is not a worry for anyone. There is actually more to this, today the article shown (at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/27/snapchat-may-be-exposed-hackers) shows an additional side to the dangers of mass media from social media.

“SnapChat has a feature where it will grab all the numbers from your address book, upload them to their server” and these issues are not dealt with? The second part can be a huge issue involving a possible start of identity theft and other forms of abuse, but they all seem to scream for ice cream! Like a horror movie they all focus on the sound, but no one seems to be looking at the actual picture. People are ‘duped’ by the millions to just go with the next hype, but it seems that no one (especially in media and social media oversight) is looking at the quality of the next hype.

It becomes even more disturbing when we see the next part “The group says they approached SnapChat almost four months ago to flag the vulnerability, but never received a response, so they decided to release the full details of their findings on Christmas Day.”

So this has been going on for months?

So many people are screaming for ‘privacy’ and the fear that the government can see things. Yet, these same dopey’s (to coin a phrase) are not up in arms about commercial exploitation?
They do not seem to care that the damage from that part will be so much higher. It boils down to the fact that the people are worried about the government paper cut, whilst hype dependent social media tools like SnapChat seem to be dumping their customers on a guillotine, go figure!

The bigger issue is that other ‘hypes’ had been hit as well in the past. So, it seems that when it is free, data protection does not seem to be an issue to many people. Concluding from this there are two sides and it is not about the choice of the individual. On the one side people condone their exploitation, which means they have no need for privacy and on the other side; they seem very concerned with what the government sees. This in my view is not fear of privacy either, it is just imagined fear. In the second degree we see yet another side; there we see employers browsing through all kinds of social media before hiring a person (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/04/16/how-social-media-can-help-or-hurt-your-job-search/), which means that you could possibly lose your chance on that job depending on what they see.

So what privacy are people actually expecting on the internet?

 

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December 21, 2013 · 20:22

Nextgen console first failing

There are these moments a person cherishes. In my case it was the info as I saw it in the last week. I am not in a gloating mood, but the idea that I can say to the CEO of Sony (and Microsoft) “I told you so!” feels pretty good.

So what happened? As I looked at my PlayStation Plus options I saw a great thing (really!). You see, Killzone is available as a free download for those who have PlayStation Plus. So, a new game, which was $100 at release night, is now a freebie if you have PlayStation Plus! This is truly a great thing! I did take an initial look, but I did not like the game (a personal choice), so it was not for me.

Make sure you take note, that I am not calling this a bad game! It is just not the game for me. This is fair enough as we can’t all like the same game!

It was at that moment that I noticed the little setback (for those who want it). The Download is 39Gb. Yes! It is 39,000 Megabyte, the size of 900 DVD’s. This is what my issue was from the very beginning with all that Microsoft online store approach for games and movies. This online approach is all nice, but take into consideration that many will likely have less than a 60 Gb monthly allowance. Adjusting that, a person’s internet costs would go up by $240-$600 a year, this means ADDITIONAL costs, not your overall internet bill. The second part is now also clear. Those who want this would sacrifice 10% of their hard drive in one go. Now, I will admit that you can buy a larger drive if need be (and you will need to). Instead of adding the $20 at the very beginning and giving the consumers a drive twice the size would have been so worth it. Now, they will need to spend $89 – $179 to get the size a gamer needs long term (1-2 Tb, which is 1,000-2,000 Gb).

Oh, and it seems that people with the Xbox One, they do not have that option, they will only have the option to add an external drive, so more cables, possible additional power plugs, it will get messy quite quickly!

So, we have two issues, our internet will max really fast and in addition we will need more storage space and all this becomes visible within 5 weeks of these NextGen consoles being released. There is of course the other side too; did these ISP’s consider the issue when millions will all download the latest games and movies? These people might all be connected through different ISP’s, yet when the internet needs to facilitate a data need of 35,000,000 Gigabyte on the night of release, things will go pear shaped really fast. That part was shown when 100,000 people tried to connect to their GTA-V online part, routers all over the world could not keep up and that was just the login. Yes, we know that the makers themselves had issues as well, but when we see issues where ISP, Rockstar and Console makers are pointing at one another we the gamers lose and that was ‘just’ a 7Gb game. I foresee that many ISP’s will get massive issues when tens of thousands of gamers try to get that 35 Gb download.

This is where we stand and there is more to come sooner than most think. Even if you have the game on disk, what happens when you have to download patches that are several Gigabytes in size? Killzone needs a large patch (not sure the exact size) and it seems that a patch will need to come for Lego Marvel super heroes. What happens when you have a dozen games? How much bandwidth for downloads will be required then? Let us not forget that downloads for patches and updates have existed forever, when we see that these larger games are above 35 Gb each, the size of these patches will dramatically increase as well. When you move from a broadband plan of $49 to a plan of $120 each month? Will you still be happy with your Next Generation console? I will admit that $120 was the largest I saw in one case only (worst scenario approach), but the reality still remains. How long for these downloads to complete? That really depends on your connection, but unless you have ADSL2 or better, downloading games that big becomes a non-option, even in the best circumstances of ADSL2 it could take around 9 hours to get through it all and if you are doing other things on the internet whilst it downloads (like Facebook/Google+) that download time will go up by a lot, so it is more than overnight. If there is a connection loss at any time you might lose more than a day. I feel certain that many people had not thought that through and did not reckon on having to deal with a download Behemoth (unless they stick to buying discs). Now, many games will not get to be that large!

Anything below 10Gb (which is still 2 DVD’s) can easily be downloaded on most connections, even though it might take a little while. Yet the NextGen is all about really high resolution (like Blu-ray), which makes the 35Gb minimum space more likely to be the average standard size then the exceptional large title.

So, do you still feel good about your Next Gen console? I truly hope you do, just make sure that you do not cut your own fingers on the download issues and if you have a PS4 (or will get one), then upgrade that hard drive sooner rather than later, because upgrading the drive immediately is just an annoyance, upgrading it after a year of gaming might turn that operation into a small nightmare.

 

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November 22, 2013 · 13:49

Protecting Consumers!

I am still on the Sony horse! It is interesting to see how consumers are do not seem to be protected and how little visibility some cases seem to get. I seem to have found what I consider to be severe consumer injustice!

This injustice is on two levels. The first level is on the side of ‘the small print approach’, the second side is on the consumer side through the shops. So as discussed in my previous blog (pricing a Sony game), where they changed the user agreement to make illegal the reselling of games and on the other side the TPP will allow them big companies to charge us more.

At the DPP, no one was willing to take any calls (they apparently do not take any calls ever). They referred me to the ASIC and the Law society of NSW. They were little help, however the Law Society did what it service minded does, and they would be able to refer me to private solicitors. This is what they do (and what they are supposed to do), so there is no case here, other that they were willing to give all the assistance they could. From there I ended up with the fair trades commission who listened and explained on how I had to go to the ACCC.

The ACCC logged the issue and it is now investigated internally.

I also talked to Channel 7, Channel 9 as well as the Sydney Morning Herald. They were all interested, but seemingly unaware to the issues that are going on at present. In my view I have always be loudly outspoken against this and I did so against the acts of Don Mattrick when he was with Microsoft. It seems hypocrite not to speak out against Sony when they try to hide in the weeds not quaking!

I am all for protecting gamers, if the little time I have left on this earth is to get some protection for them against injustice and greed, then this is a fight worth fighting. The gamers are now swiftly placed between the TPP (Trans Pacific Pact), raising the price of entertainment even further and the forces crushing the options of pre-owned games for those not being able to afford full priced games, something must clearly be done.

It is also interesting how the government and the Fair Trade commission remain silent on these matters. Shops rely on pre-owned games to survive after the margins of new games are reduced to an absolute minimum. The pre-owned games keep them into business. As large companies are paying less and less corporate tax as their offers go to downloaded revenue (which often goes via non-commonwealth tax shelters). We see that they are paying less and they are the cause of shutting down local shops with these new arrangements. I believe in fairness and at present there is no fairness in any of this.

Too squeeze a population already in hardship, to hurt them even further with these events is beyond acceptable!

In case you see some response on ‘generic’ or some party line response how this is not the intent of the Sony User agreement, then consider one other piece of information. PlayStation Home offered an amazing private space for sale. It was by loot and it is a graphic and technological highlight. You buy the private space where you can walk around. It is so amazing as this is a new form of private space. Not only is it graphically superior on many levels, it has a new level of interactivity. The private space allows you to monitor twitter via a light bar in your apartment. It offers LOOT™ Radios (music) and EOD TV (movies, TV shows). This is a new era in entertainment, yet not everywhere available. They were very clear in communicating that part. I get that part! Yet, consider that Loot is part of Sony, and that the TPP is about to limit retransmissions of broadcasts even further, how long until consumers ‘lose’ those options? In addition some places cost US$2.99, whilst in Australia the same places cost AU$4.99 and in the UK GBP 2.39. So, when we set this all to the same (US) currency we see:

United States $2.99, Australia $4.61 (+54%), United Kingdom $4.19 (+40%). So not only do we pay on average a lot more, we get less for the overall package. Interesting how this lacks the visibility it deserves!

I wonder how much visibility the press and the news casts will give all this in the coming days. In my eyes it might be an interesting stretch to see how much power they have over the press, in case of the UK we should look at how much visibility they give all this. They claim that they could regulate themselves? Well, if this is true, how come that NO ONE (of the big newspapers in the UK) has had any visibly outspoken view on these matters by Sony? I saw a few sources like ‘reddit’ and other bloggers pick this up, but that is about it. If you are wondering on the size of these matters, I am not a journalist, I am not some high powered media mogul, I am just a blogger who knows games. The gaming industry encompasses a market in extent of 20 billion dollars a year. That is a market big enough for ALL newspapers to keep one eagle eye on any news that impacts it. No visibility seems to have been given at present. A questionable turn of events!

Who is looking out for the consumers, especially those who do not have that much to spend?

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November 20, 2013 · 15:58

Pricing a Sony game!

If you followed the changes, then it is clear that the console war is currently getting fought and they are now going for all kinds of niche based solutions to keep a handle on greed (as in, to make it more money in any way they can).

In these hard economic times we are all trying to find a solution to make ends meet. If we focus on the gamers, then we see a group of people that is massively represented by those still being tertiary students and many of them are younger than that. So, this is a group that is not overly wealthy. Even the working population that might be into gaming is trying to make ends meet and they too are not swimming in loads of cash. It was in this environment that places like EB-Games are making decent cash to sell pre-owned games. When you do not have a load of cash, getting a pre-owned game at $15-$50 is a lot more appealing than getting the newly packed unused version at $89-$119.

As per last week that commercial game is changing fast on two fronts. The first one is the TPP (Trans Pacific Pact), if this one gets pushed through (the Australian liberal government was trying to do this in secret, but several sources are now openly aware of it), that pact will be an option for Microsoft AND Sony to make even more money than before (as in charge us more for products, as discussed in my previous blog). So, the fact that we in Australia pay on average 35%-60% more on a game was perhaps not enough margin, which will mean that new games will find even less appeal.

But have no fear, Sony (Microsoft too) already has a solution to stop alternatives. In the updates last week, my PlayStation 3 was shown a new agreement and we either agree with this or we lose the online options, which is disastrous for ALL gamers owning a PlayStation.

In this new agreement it stated:

7. Resale
7.1 You must not resell either Disc-Based or Software downloads, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher.

So, the end of pre-owned games has come. Basically, until they can check and enforce it, we are breaking the law, which might give Sony the option to cancel our PSN account and once they can check whether a game is new or not (perhaps they already can), they will just charge us an additional fee or shut the game(r) down. The agreement has many more needles involving unlocking regions, reverse engineering and so on. There are a few sides to that, but in that regard, personally, I think that any company would want to protect their own product, which is fair enough.

Did anyone realise this? So, not only are they greed driven on selling new games, they are destroying a commercial part that has not ever been illegal. Many expected this, but most did not see this coming from both sides at the same time.

No matter how we go next, whether we go to download games, which means Sony stops paying a lot more corporate tax in Australia (and other nations too), or we end up paying way too much for games. So, nextgen consoles will now start to show that it will cost us (more).

In regards to borrowing, Sony never stopped others borrowing a friend’s game. For Sony it is just good business, however, the console game has changed and will keep on changing a little longer at high cost to many of us. So, it is important to see that they never lied; they just did not mention other changes.

So our world is changing fast and it starts changing faster and more extreme as per the end of this year. It is interesting how America, who claims to have high morals, will sell others down the track to big business for simple greed; this is how I see the TPP.

Consider that this could be the end of gaming as we know it. If you think that this is exaggerated, consider that good games are original games (or come directly from them). EA and UBI-Soft are showing us less and less originality. (An 11th version of a sport game or a 4th sequel to Assassins Creed is not an original). Our hopes were with the Indie developers who come with that golden idea that will invigorate us with the passion of a new gaming era. As the TPP reads (for as far as I read parts of them), the pact is there to push IP powers to the US and its allies (where these big businesses are based). This is not what IP was about, it was always about protecting innovation, not for big business to exploit and to hammer down their interests to their extent.

In gaming, innovation has not come from big business for a long time!

Consider Minecraft and Catherine, some will not call them great games, the first one is massively addictive, both are originals. Even next year’s release of ‘the Evil Within’ which comes from a small player called Tango Gameworks should be seen as an original. Even though many of their staff come from Capcom, this new player has the creative mind that brought us Resident Evil. It is important to protect these small developers, even (or better especially) if they are not from Japan or USA. Forcing them under some IP umbrella designed by the TPP was never the goal (this is how I see this going in the future). When innovation goes, games (or art) will suffer first! That has been proven more than once. So how will you feel about a $500 console when big business decides what makes a good game? Consider that NONE of the big boys (in those days) wanted to publish the game Lemmings. I remember that it only got out because some people at Psygnosis were not too busy. It became one of the most successful games EVER to make it to the home computers and to my knowledge the only game EVER to be released on most 8-bit and 16 bit systems (it was a really addictive game).

If we look at 2013, then in my view, ‘The Last of Us’ (by naughty dog) and ‘Beyond Two Souls’ might be the actual original games of 2013, even though the latter one is based on the Heavy Rain engine, so originality is a little bit of an issue there. If you want to see another example of originality then ‘Dragon Story’ comes to mind. Even though I think that they made several greed driven mistakes via their IOS edition, this game could be on Nintendo, the game that will compete with Pokémon. If they grow the engine beyond what they have now, it could become a mega seller for the younger players on any console if they add more game play to what they have.

Yes, 2013 had great games, but they were all sequels beyond the ones I mentioned (I apologise for any titles I missed), so if we are to grow as gamers, then we need originality! The changes as we see them will drive us all to other systems and perhaps that might become the very expensive lesson that Sony and Microsoft will have to learn the hard way. Consider the option of getting that Google console for $99 and buy (and play) a ‘Minecraft like’ game on that! Over a hundred hours of fun for the price of a single Sony/Microsoft game.

Gamers do not like to get boxed in, both Sony and Microsoft better learn this fast!
If consumers who are into gaming would consider waiting no less than three months before they buy a next Gen console. They might end up getting a much better deal in both the short run and the long run. How much damage are Sony and Microsoft willing to suffer? Holding a 16 billion dollar industry at ransom is currently the only option I can think of, especially as governments (Australia included) are very willing to give the keys (and powers) of Intellectual Property unjustly to big business.

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November 16, 2013 · 23:17

A changing console war

We are 12 days from the beginning of a new war, an all-out war, it is the war of the consoles and this war will start now and will go on until past Christmas. Yes, Christmas is the new center of these war efforts.

On the left side we have the one, and on the right side, the other. It is Sony versus Microsoft and it does not matter who you choose or support, you the gamer will make at some point a choice. Some with get neither and some will get both, 4 groups! From my view, I choose the Sony side, as the PlayStation 4 is stated by them as a system for gamers! Yet, both sides made the same mistake, even though Sony had an optional alternative, both systems come with a 500 Gb drive. The PS4 allows for the system to be upgraded with a bigger drive. What I do not understand is why they did not install a 1Tb drive for a mere $20 more. There is a lot more to this, but about that part more a little later.

I will mention at this point, right now, that part of the view that follows has bias. I want to be completely impartial, but to claim impartiality when a person’s passion is attacked is at times way to ludicrous!

My issue with the Xbox One, the Microsoft (aka Micro$oft) product had issues from the very beginning. First, they (Microsoft via Don Mattrick) announced on the need for a once a day login to the Microsoft system. I discussed that in my blog called ‘Discrimination or Segmentation in gaming? (UPDATED!)‘ In June 2013, that part was later recalled, which is why I updated the blog. I do believe in keeping people abreast of the correct information. Microsoft made the blog again in August 2013 in my blog called ‘Tax evasion, copyrighted by Vodafone?‘ This was all about ‘pay as little as taxation as possible‘, which will link to this later. Then in September 2013 we get the blog ‘The marks of trade‘ which again links Microsoft. So, why are these linked to the console war?

The last article has the mayor link to what the consumers of their choice in the console wars are not getting informed about.  “When the digital world is entering the field where more and more possible ‘new’ consumers are updated through the net, it seems that their marketing and party lines need to get a massive overhaul and it should all get a much better mentor system then it currently seems to have.” There is a side that had been hidden, even from me. This side is not on the up and up and even game sites like Gamespot have until now been silent about it. The latter one is silent about it as they might not be aware at all, which would be fair enough.

So what is going on?

The next generation of consoles will evolve into a new world that is all about DRM (Digital Rights Management). Even though you think that this was off the table, certain changes are now becoming visible doubting that all no matter what some executives claim to be the case. In case of Microsoft, for their system, as this is not a gaming system, but it has been labelled as an ‘entertainment system’ this all will become a much bigger issue. Do not think that Sony is off the hook here, they will be part of all this down the road too!

The issue came to light when I was made aware to an article called “TPP ‘A Substantial Threat To Australian Sovereignty’” (at https://newmatilda.com/2013/11/14/tpp-serious-threat-australian-sovereignty). If we ignore mentions like ‘secret law‘ for now and concentrate on “a law that will override the High Court of Australia” as quoted, then we see that our attention was pulled away from lawmaking that will have a massive influence on global users of all forms of entertainment.

Suelette Dreyfus a research fellow from the University of Melbourne states “At its heart the TPP is basically a grab for money. It will take money out of the pockets of average Australians and give it to large corporations in the US“. She also makes a mention on how illegal movies will now have to be policed by the ISP’s, even though the high Court of Australia had already ruled in ‘Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd [2012] HCA 16‘ in this matter. The law changes would influence future events. I dealt with the initial issues of illegal downloads somewhere during the year, but the change might, if enforced mean that, should illegal downloads stop (I am not against that), that the economic fallout would be enormous. Consider that Telco’s would see a bandwidth drop of two marks, which would mean that the consumer bill would lower an average of $30 a month, with over 7 million users this amounts to 210 million revenue per month less (spread over several providers), this would have a massive consequence, but the effect would soon be global if this path continues. To be frank, it does not affect me, I never download movies. I prefer the quality of a DVD/Blu-Ray on my TV screen, whenever I want it.

Brendan Molloy, the Information freedom activist and Councillor for Pirate Party Australia has an interesting view on other changes. “Perhaps the most shocking inclusion in the TPP IP chapter is criminalisation of non-commercial copyright infringement.” The Australian patent law changes, discussed in what is referred to as the ‘raising the bar act 2013‘, is all about promoting innovation. These events change everything. His quote “The text even attempts to consider temporary copies to be copyright infringement!” is an interesting (read dangerous) change. It implies that personal owned transfers (like CD to MP3) could be affected. A final quote is “There is language that would lower global standards on medical patents and potentially extend patents beyond 20 years, all supported by the United States.” This means that there steps in place to thwart innovation and strangle hold commerce. This means that only the big boys will be able to dictate progress for the next few decades, which means innovation goes out the window for a long time to come.

Angela Mitropoulos, Researcher at the University of Sydney has the following to say “The biggest winners in the TPP are the largest global corporations and, with the proliferation of mechanisms proposed, they intend to fully harness the infrastructures of the internet and the full force of the law in order to capture and extract even larger profits and a wider share of the world market.”

Basically, the new world terrorists will be the large corporations, if these reported events are true. So how does this strike back to the console war of Sony and Microsoft?

First of all, games and consoles are ALL about innovation. A console is only as good as its games and without innovation a console dies fast. Sometimes reverse engineering is the only way to get true progress. Consider the parts mentioned earlier, and if you have a console (either Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3), look at all the parts you have and how many of these parts were not an official Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft product. Items like recharge-able batteries, controllers and head sets. All that could stop! The issue goes a lot further, if we consider the quote from Brendan Molloy “article QQ.G.10 reinforces one of the worst parts of our current IP regime, which consists of legal protections for technical protection measures. Why should it be illegal to jailbreak your iPhone?”

So products like Blu-Ray’s and DVD regions and Smartphones. All of it treated under scrutiny of big business! Consider that due to these changes the new iPhone 6 could then only be there for the Telstra (or Vodafone) customers (presumption). These changes would make these events possible. Smaller firms would quickly be pushed out of existence, giving even more power to big Telco’s. This could also have an effect on consoles. If we consider the implications, then the danger becomes ever more apparent that the innovation that we desire to see gaming go forward is also in danger as a sizeable part of the indie developers are in the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany and a few others, who are not part of this agreement. So, if Sony and Microsoft set their IP stranglehold to such an extent to drive these developers away, then what happens to innovation?

The TPP seems to be about segregation not about innovation (as far as I saw the information pass by), which means that whatever happens will be under complete control for Sony and Microsoft for their respective consoles. Is this bad or is this good?

I think it is a bad thing, if we consider innovation in gaming. I am not against Activision protecting themselves against a reverse engineered version of Skylanders on one side, but to strangle hold a market will never lead to innovation, which translates in our case to better and new original games.

The next part is on Microsoft specifically. This is because they ‘wanted’ to label their system as an ‘entertainment system’ as such; the changes that the TPP is trying to push through will have additional consequences for the Xbox One.

The initial TPP article made the following mention, which came from Brendan Molloy “The United States has proposed several provisions that are anti-innovation. One such provision is a blanket ban on the retransmission of TV signals over the Internet in Article QQ.H.12, regardless of purpose, without permission of the rights holder.” This is where I get back to that small drive in the Xbox One. There are two sides. If we cannot store too much on the Xbox One, then we must either park it on the cloud (where we can be monitored), or we download it again and again (costing us bandwidth). That was ‘yesterday’, when the TPP comes into play, the retransmission of a movie from the cloud might come with additional limitations where any additional ‘replay’ could be charged. I am not stating that it will, yet the changes are ALL about economic control, so it could happen. This reflects back to the part in ‘Tax evasion, copyrighted by Vodafone?‘, because even though we are all charged, the provider is likely to pay a lot less taxation on these services, so not only will local commerce get hurt, those local governments will collect a lot less corporate taxation because of this all. We saw that in cases of Apple, Amazon, Google and a few others.

That means that the digital movie and TV options from Microsoft would go through very specific bans and very tight rules. This means that picking up the Swedish or the Dutch newscasts online might not be possible. You see, QQ.H.12 is one step away from WHICH stations your entertainment system will receive, all set in a nice package pushed through by a nation that is one step away from bankruptcy, desperately in need of money! You still feel safe with your Xbox One?

So, as we see the interaction of QQ.G.10 (jail breaking) and QQ.H.12 (retransmission) we see that in the broadest sense of the word that Microsoft could decide what we see and when we see it. Is this the global, shared world we were supposed to move forward to?

The site ‘Business Spectator’ quoted the following in regards to the TPP. “Besides the United States, the pact would include 11 other nations, among them Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Mexico, though it excludes regional powerhouse China as well as Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy.” So, it seems that the IP world is no longer about making a global effort in moving forward, with these different trade pacts we will get a new war, not on resources, but on who gets to play with what, when and how and the new consoles are smack in the middle of this changing landscape.

So if your console does more then play games, the question will soon become ‘at what price‘ will it do what it does?

Philip Dorling from the Sydney Morning Herald reported this 2 days ago “Australians could pay more for drugs and medicines, movies, computer games and software” so even though we get to pay 30%-60% more on games at present and 60% more for movies, we might end up paying even more then that? I am not even touching medication, which is a hot iron on several levels. To read that Tony Abbott is quoted in the article with “Prime Minister Tony Abbott has indicated he is keen to see the trade talks pushed to a successful conclusion next month” gives us further pause for concern. The man just got elected and it looks like he sold us out to the Americans within 80 days of his election, this must be a new world record!

So the choice of your new console could come with an additional price tag, one that the politicians will happily leave to big business to decide. I have not known ANY instance EVER, where greed driven entities EVER decided in favour of the consumer! It is an expensive lesson gamers might soon be forced to learn again soon.

Have a great holiday and don’t let that new console hit you too hard in the Credit Card on the way out of the shop.

 

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November 8, 2013 · 20:00

Is SIGINT a joke?

The news has been rampant on several levels these last few days. Whether it is revelation 16 (roughly) by the traitor Snowden, whether it is the historic event that the top three in British intelligence were in one line, as requested by British parliament, or the fact of revelations we read in the press, whilst (former) press members find themselves prosecuted for blatant and indiscriminate invasion of privacy. The list goes on and on and on.

There is a lot more, but let us confine ourselves to these three events.

For the Commonwealth the event in Parliament was likely the ‘important’ one. Was it truly about the events there? Some might want to question the questions, the answers and what follows. I, with my sense of perspective wondered about the choice of the green tie that Sir John Sawers was wearing. Does it matter? It is all as trivial as choosing pancakes for breakfast!

Yes, we all think we know it, we all think we have an inkling of an idea. I did have an idea, but that was almost 29 years ago. Now, I still have an idea from my specialised view of data, data technologies as well as data collection techniques and none of that falls with MI-6 (only a small part of it). The gem of the event was with Sir Iain Lobban, director of GCHQ, which gave us the part we need to care about. You see, as the press was so willing to give out the details as the people had a right to know, as we have allowed our wrists to get cut because the press is all about advertising profits, gang bang sensation and visibility, it was willing to sacrifice safety and progress for PR and visibility. To go deep and give both criminals and terrorists the information on how to avoid certain paths of detection we see the limits of their use. These same reporters that are part of a group listening in on voice mails to get the scoop, who will sanctimoniously proclaim freedom of the press, will not hesitate to sell their neighbour down the drain for the commission of another column of text, paid per letter.

From my point, if I had the option of making the killing shot ending Edward Snowden’s life I would, even if that gets me 20 years in prison, because traitors do not deserve consideration of any kind. The entire situation of laughable as an American ran to their Communist opponent and almost 50% of the American population considered it a good thing. In addition, if in light of the revealed information a child of Guardian editor in chief Alan Rusbridger would get molested, then he would blame the system on the front page of his newspaper immediately. I do not wish anything bad on him or his family ever! He is not likely to be worried as his four hundred thousand pound a year job allows for secure private schools, but what about the other children? Those children who are not that safe environment, possibly in danger to be at the mercy of predators, whom now with knowledge of longer avoidance and as such pose even more danger to innocent victims. What about them?

It is a level of what I see as utter short-sightedness. An assault on three groups that have lived in a world of ambiguity to get their work done, now that world is in turmoil, especially as some traitor comes with information that is for the most non confirmable, too much goes from the air of ‘Snowden told us, so it must be true’. Several questions are not dealt with on many levels, especially by the press. It just drains the gravy train as it sells more and more news (papers).

The second part is directly linked to all this. Two news messages:

1. Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords (at http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9A703020131108)
2. Snowden has stolen 50,000 to 200,000 Classified Items from NSA.

The second had no verifiable source and as such there is no way to tell how correct that is, the first one is more of an issue. How stupid are Americans? That is of course if there is any truth in that part.

YOU NEVER GIVE OUT THAT INFO!

You can leave your partner/spouse/lover at some university frat party to have all the sex he/she needs, you give your credit card to your kids to buy all the toys they want, giving out login information is beyond utterly stupid. Snowden would not have needed it. As an IT person he either has rights to make changes, or he does not. If he did not, then giving out login info is the worst anyone could do. If this ever went to court then he could blame the original account holder. It is a level of non-repudiation!

So were the people at the NSA born stupid and stopped evolving after birth? That remains to be seen! The point is that the press is not that trustworthy either! The second part in regards to the classified items was from a non-disclosed, but also non verifiable source. There is no way for me to know. The question from this part is the one you do not see discussed openly on the news. How did all this info leave the building? Who was in charge? Issues that are also in play for Sir Iain Lobban! How vulnerable is GCHQ? What is in play to prevent this to happen in the UK? Even though Booz Allen Hamilton was cleared as they are the official boss of Edward Snowden, yet how was the clearing process? What are the checks in place for civilian contractors? The Washington Post published a large article questioning civilian contractor issues, from this part we wonder if it was deep enough. Even more, why were these issues not looked at more than a YEAR before the Snowden issues started?

If it was up to me (Sir Iain Lobban is likely secure in the knowledge that this is the last option that should ever happen), then I would like to make a small change at GCHQ. I would add a new inner circle, consisting of a Law Lord and two members from both MI-5 and MI-6 to watch the watchers. My only worry is that whoever oversees GCHQ internally is part of the ‘problem’ (no illegal or negative inclination implied). It does not harm for a set of cleared fresh eyes to look at the system to see if there is a danger. Something similar would need to happen at the NSA, but with their systems and such it might be a different source of people (like members of cyber command FBI and cyber command military).

There is too much info out there supporting the idea that US intelligence (and other governmental departments) seems to be oblivious to the need for Common Cyber Sense (at present with the amount of published info, it is unlikely that my thought on this is wrong).

Here is the third part, the PRESS part!

Their phone hacking was all about exploitation, revenue, profit and personal gain. The Intelligence community is about keeping people safe. There is a massive difference. If you wonder about these events, then consider the fact that because of greed and revenue, no steps have been taken on a global scale to see who buys your personal details and who has them. It could influence your insurance premium, your credit rating and your financial options. No one seems to be on par to get that properly regulated, because in America, Cash is king and the president to the United States is simply a number with a possible temporary status elevation, the rest is data cattle, sold at a moment’s notice. This risk is very real in the UK and Europe too. A consumer is nothing more than a customer number with an address and with a possible shipment of goods under way, that is their value and only for as long as they need products. To some extent the Washington Post covered this a week ago at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-chertoff-what-the-nsa-and-social-media-have-in-common/2013/10/31/b286260e-4167-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

what is less known is that they are one of the few who took a decent look at it (the Washington post), the rest remains on the Snowden gravy train, not informing anyone, they simply re-quote a Reuters line. Seems a little wrong doesn’t it? The article by Michael Chertoff sees the gem no one properly questions half way through where he wrote “there is no assurance that what is disseminated has context or news value“.

The true part, the real smart and the questionable art! The intelligence world is ALL about disseminating information and giving proper weight to the information acquired. It is about finding the bad guys, without that weight it is all media gossip used by the press and as we saw, the disciples of Rupert Murdoch have truly dented that group’s reliability, perhaps for a long time.

So is today’s SIGINT a joke? I hope not, because if so, the questions had been phrased at the wrong people. At some point parliament gets to answer the questions asked by the innocent and the victims on how parliament asked all about data and left corporations to do whatever they liked with our personal details. How many UK companies have had a backup data server in the US?

Consider this quote by Salesquest “The Siebel Customer Intelligence List consists of 265 Fortune 1000 or Global 500 companies that have deployed Siebel in their enterprise application environment. The first tab in the spread sheet lists the 265 Siebel customers, industries, corporate headquarter addresses, phone numbers, and web site addresses.” (At http://www.salesquest.com/resources/siebel-customer-list/)

How many of those are backing up their data to some server park in San Antonio? Consider those places, all their customer data, their financial data and forecast information. In some cases, the data will come from over a dozen nations. It is nice to ask where their data is, but what about the data dumps, the logs and the backups, where were they kept?

Let the intelligence community do what it needs to do, if not, then neither we nor the press gets to point fingers at them when things truly go very wrong.

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October 29, 2013 · 23:03

The Wrong questions!

Another day and another day we see escalations into the direction that was once called ‘No Such Agency’ and now regarded as the only server in the US that allows anonymous and the People’s Republic of China to get port 8080 access. Go figure!

As we see another article in the Guardian, this time the limelight shines on Dianne Feinstein, chairperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee. It seems that she wants to a complete review of the NSA (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/nsa-surveillance-dianne-feinstein-opposed-allies)The article leaves the doctors check on the pulse that listening in on several leaders of the allied nations is taking a dip for the worst. All this is shown against another reference towards Snowden’s disclosures. This picture is wrong in many ways. You see, the first two events might have had some work by Snowden, yet overall, when we consider the amount of data that Snowden has walked away with is beyond strange.

We could come to the following conclusions.

1. The NSA is completely oblivious to a silly little thing called Common Cyber Sense.
2. The NSA is completely oblivious to standard network security and logging.

Consider that SE-Linux is a NSA invention (OK, that was a strong word, but they were the driving force of SE-Linux). The first two issues show that the NSA either lost the plot, or they decided to hire a multitude of Americans with IT skills that seems limited to the connection that their child has a Nintendo!

Now feel free to laugh out loud, but consider the information. Allegedly listening in on conversations of the leader of a sovereign nation is not something one would admit to. This is not a bulk thing, this is specific. The fact that only a chosen few had that information would be the way to go. Consider any firm having a ‘second’ bookkeeping system. What are the chances that anyone but the CEO, CFO and the head of IT knew about that? That is just a ‘little’ tax evasion and commission increase. In case of the NSA they are alleged to keep phone records on most of their European allies. You think that this is NSA lunchroom conversation material? Snowden should never have had any access to it. So either the NSA system is completely broken, or we are dealing with something completely different.

3. The NSA has decided staff monitoring was not an issue?

That point is actually less correct, however when reading “Intelligence Authorization Legislation: Status and Challenges” at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R40240.pdf you will see on page 15 “the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2013, passing the legislation by a vote of 14-1, and the bill was reported to the Senate on July 30, 2012. Among other things, S. 3454 as passed by the committee:” linked to this it states: “Requires the intelligence community to develop a comprehensive insider threat program management plan.” So after the Brits showed you in the 60’s that someone could be working for MI-6 and Russia at the same time, this was not clearly in place? (actually, such systems have been in place for a long time, yet the document seems to refer to ‘developing’ and not ‘upgrading’, which makes me wonder why the tax payer is paying for all these internal security officers.

Also, this was at least 6 months BEFORE there was Snowden, and all the members of the Alphabet Soup have their own Internal Security Officers. How come the NSA missed so many alert events? I can understand some leakage with the CIA. Those people are all over the place, hundreds of locations, thousands of involved people. So statistically, if only one person slips up a day, it would be a really good day for the CIA. If we compare it to the restricted, bundled and compact NSA, they seemed to have ‘loosened’ up its standards twice each 10 minutes. This does not add up!

If you question some of this (you should always do that, never take things at face value).

Then consider that the US Intelligence Community consists of:

  • Air Force Intelligence
  • Army Intelligence
  • Central Intelligence Agency
  • Coast Guard Intelligence
  • Defense Intelligence Agency
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of State
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Drug Enforcement Administration
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • Marine Corps Intelligence
  • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  • National Reconnaissance Office
  • National Security Agency (<- free data access here)
  • Navy Intelligence

And the massive amount of leaked information comes from just one of these groups. Now let me make a jump out of the box. Consider the picture I have shown you and consider that the NSA was mostly invisible before the 90’s. Now, nothing remains invisible forever, yet, the step from unknown to open source is a mighty leap. Is it so weird that we should look into other directions?

What if Snowden is not the person he claims to be? I personally still believe he is a joke at best, a patsy at worst. What if the leak is NOT a person? Consider the amount of data that SIGINT parses. What if the Echelon system was compromised? Is someone having a backdoor into the SIGINT satellite system not a lot more likely than one person walking out with Gigabytes of data, through the front door of one of what used to be regarded as one of the most secure locations on the planet? Yes, these satellites are supposed to have top level encryption, yet in 2004 two Chinese academics wrote a paper on how such levels of encryption could be broken. That was 8 years ago!

This would mean that Director James Clapper has another issue on his plate. Getting into an intelligence satellite is supposed to be really hard, so was there an ‘open information supporter’ when it was build? Is there a security flaw in its logical system? Is this option so much more unlikely then a person, who was according to several magazines seen as “The CIA believed Snowden had tried to access classified data that he wasn’t authorized to view. Based on this suspicion, the agency decided to send Snowden packing.”

So that person made it into the NSA? Even if that was the case (which it was), would this person be allowed to remain unmonitored and get his hands on the amount of data that is now all over the Guardian editorial?

Not even the US could ever get to be THAT dim! Now consider what I said at the beginning, the CIA flagged him accessing data he was not cleared for. Do you think a mere technician had access to the phone data collection of not one, but a host of national leaders. Top Secret information that would have been limited to an absolute minimum number of people.

The numbers do not add up and it seems that nobody is asking the right questions.

 

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October 28, 2013 · 19:31

Damage through virtual nudity

Gamespot’s Feedbackula gave me pause for this issue. It seems that when you have a PlayStation 3 debugging console, it will be possible to see Ellen Page ‘fully’ naked in a shower scene. Now, this was a little issue, because when I played the game the clock in the kitchen stated 7:49, which meant that pizza and the CIA buddy would arrive in roughly 660 seconds. The buddy might arrive late, but the pizza delivery guy is not likely to be late, hence, no shower. I saw the shower footage and under normal conditions you see nothing revealing. Which seemed to be different from Heavy Rain (a game I did not play) there is complete nudity, like a decent quality movie, when she takes of her panties, Madison’s view on her thighs are ‘blocked’ by a washbasin between her and the camera. So, basically we saw nothing ‘too’ revealing. With Beyond two souls it is a different thing. Here we saw in the making, that Ellen and her co-workers were all in tight fitting black overalls with grey balls all over their bodies (like bad 21st century polka dot fashion), which means that the body they used was not Ellen (so I guess), so why is this likely to hit her career? Willem Dafoe was naked in ‘Body of Evidence’; his career did not take a hit, did it? In case female gamers are into seeing a little more of Eric Winters, which made Katherine Heigl go ‘Oh my!‘ then check out ‘the Ugly truth’, for extra giggles check out the ‘outtakes’ on the DVD.

So why this hypocrisy, more important, how was this not avoided? I think that the breasts might not have been a big issue; here in Australia we see tens of thousands of them on the beach (usually in sets of two). What is likely the bigger issue is the noisy mess Sony is making out of it all! The latest (which is a few days old), is that “Actress Ellen Page is reportedly considering a lawsuit against Sony, it was revealed yesterday“, this news showed up on more than one location, so I do not know where this is at. What is important is that this is the same glitch Heavy Rain had and as such I do not know what that status is. That nude scene was on several sites. I do not know whether this had been Madison’s actual body (played by Jacqui Ainsley), if so then we can only envy Guy Ritchie. Likely that the nude body of Jacqui Ainsley was also based on someone else, but I could not tell in either case if this was the case (just logical assumption on my part).

Should Ellen Page go to court, then she would end up with a strong case. The Heavy Rain issue was from 2010; the fact that this issues surfaces again three years later, means that either Sony or the developer was unable or unwilling to learn from past mistakes. Those possibilities tend to get expensive once proven. Jacqui Ainsley was a model in numerous glossies; Ellen Page is an award winning actress, winning an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. If she can show that this event is hurting her career, then it would be fun to read in Forbes in 2014, that a Canadian from Nova Scotia became the CEO of Sony, a company that is one of the pillars of the Japanese Economy, (an unlikely, but entertaining scenario). I got the image from http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2013/10/uncensored-pictures-of-ellen-page-from.html (it is one of several sites).

B2S_Shower1a
I am adding a censored frontal shot, so that people can see how far this scene was taken onto the disc (even though nothing was ever shown in the actual game). It does not matter whether it was playful banter, or just a little piece of candy for the male gamers (remember that only development test consoles allowed for changing the camera angles), so why was it all taken this far for a scene that was not needed for the game or the storyline?

I initially thought that this would mean that this would add up to good times for Ellen Page. The issue is that when it comes to virtual nudity not much exists. There is an interesting paper called ‘A Passive Approach to Regulation of Virtual Worlds’ by Jacob Rogers that made it to the ‘The George Washington Law Review’. It was published in 2008 Vol. 76. (Pages 405-425). In this paper Jacob observes that there is a lot of legislation missing involving virtual events. However, Ellen is not without due defence. As Jacob quotes Professor Jack Balkin “someone might bring claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Which came from “Jack M. Balkin, ‘Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds’,2004”. So there is precedence for this, which takes us to the world of Torts. Sony might claim that there was no intent, yet the issue three years earlier (also with a Sony game) had not been dealt with, which takes us to the world of Torts. We have Foreseeability of damage, the Wagon Mound 1 case [1961] could apply. If we consider (there are statistics), that the average gamer is a horny little rascal, then we could foresee that they would check the heavy rain option the moment a shower scene came up, if we accept (consider) that the shower scene had no bearing on the story, then we can consider two sides. First in the regard that the scene could have been replaced by a gun cleaning scene (she fires a few during the game), A hand wash laundry scene (in case the steam on the mirror was essential) or a dressing scene in front of a mirror. In the second it would have been an option to make the shower scene a non-interfering cut scene (a movie cut, not a location cut). All these options! As we are in torts, the negligent act causing economic loss is a situation that is covered in every common law nation, yes also in Japan.

So we can safely say that should Miss Page take this to the next level, Sony might be wise to give her a residency tower (to get some landlord income on the side), a small percentage in Sony Interactive Entertainment and at least 5 roles at twice her last pay to settle this issue (not a bad day for a short youthful Halifax Canadian). It is not realistic, but we can hope for her!

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